


not entirely a lie

by venndaai



Category: Machineries of Empire Series - Yoon Ha Lee
Genre: And Romance, Depression, Gender Issues, Identity Issues, Other, POV First Person, Sort Of, mentioned Jedao/Kujen, mentioned Jedao/Ruo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 11:22:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14893691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/pseuds/venndaai
Summary: What's left of Shuos Jedao, what's left of Ajewen Cheris, and Khiruev.With appearances by High General Brezan and some underappreciated servitors.





	not entirely a lie

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure I really believe the interpretation of the Cheris/Jedao fusion that I went for in this fic, but it's the one I relate to/project onto the most, so, well.
> 
> Some background details taken from the Hexarchate flash fics on Yoon Ha Lee's dreamwidth.

Once there was a woman who liked other women, and once there was a man who mostly liked other men but sometimes liked women as well. This caused moderate confusion when they became me, but so did a lot of other things, like my fondness for pickled cabbage. Too salty, I’d always thought, trying to cut it into pieces with an army knife during a planetside siege; just salty enough, I’d decided centuries later at my first meal in the Kel Academy cafeteria. I eat it now and it tastes like confusion. 

I’m thinking about cabbage when I enter the med bay, because I’m afraid of thinking about anything else, and embarrassed of my fear.

Khiruev looks twenty years older, after her ordeal. It only makes her more beautiful. There are more white streaks in her hair, and a fragility to her that wasn't there when I brazened my way onto her moth a year ago. She reminds me even more of Nerevor. She's my senior, my elder, but she isn't. She's smiling when she puts the watch on the table. Her eyes are young.

When I pick it up, the watch is warm from her hands. I can feel the tiny tick of its mechanical heart, beating in my hands. Small hands, pale fingers revealed now that I’m not even wearing the half-gloves.

I know that to be free of formation instinct is to be terribly alone, and I don't want Khiruev to be alone right now, but I don't know how to ask to stay. The birdform servitor brushes against my leg to remind me that she isn't alone after all. It's probably better company than I am. 

"Tell me about yourself," Khiruev says.

I pull a chair up to her bed and sit down. "Which self?" I ask. 

She looks at me with her young/old eyes. "I was thinking about our conversation earlier," she says. "About... offspring. It sounded like you'd thought about having children."

I relax, lean back into the chair, the watch warm in my folded hand, my eyes still on her face. 

"Jedao did," I say. "I didn't have feelings one way or the other."

"So that conversation we had," Khiruev says. "You were pretending to feel the way that he would? You were acting?"

Suddenly, I'm at a loss for words. I open my palm so I can drum two fingers on the glossy metal surface of the watch.

"Are you Ajewen Cheris?" she asks me, the woman I destroyed, the woman who survived me, who I wanted as a protege, who I wanted- who I still want. Who is watching me, and I can see her gaze still drifting at times, eyes unfocusing, but always coming back to me, which warms me more than it should. 

"Yes," I say immediately.

"And are you Garach Jedao Shkan?"

I hesitate. A Yes rises in my throat, automatic, that's my name, though hearing it in full like that makes me think of my mother scolding me,  _ Garach Jedao Shkan, are you bothering the geese again? _

"I don't know," I say.

She picks up a piece of machinery from the tray the servitors brought her and spins a gear, not idly but with what looks like purpose, her eyes focusing on it the way they couldn't on me. 

"Cheris, then," she says. "I know a great deal about you, thanks to Brezan's admirable thoroughness as a personnel officer. But you never told me anything about yourself."

I try to come up with some good truths to tell her. She deserves all of them, but it's hard for me to open up about my life as Cheris after a year of pretending not to be her. 

I put the watch back down for the moment. I fold my empty hands over each other. The raven luckstone is back on the sidetable in my- in Khiruev's quarters- but after so much time spent holding it I can imagine the sensation perfectly. "I had a good childhood," I say. "I didn't know how good, at the time. Jedao and I both did, actually. No childhood traumas to speak of." I press my palms against each other, ending the luckstone's imaginary existence. I pick up the watch again, trying to act like I don't suddenly hear the rushing of millions of feathers, a sound that's been following me around for a while. "I shouldn't have left," I say. "That was all I could think of, when you brought me the news about the Vidona threat. If I'd stayed they would still be alive."

"And the Hexarchate wouldn't have a hope," Khiruev says.

I know that, of course. I shouldn't be begging her to remind me, certainly not when she's just started recovering. 

"I'm sorry for the things I said to you that day," Khiruev says, which brings me up short. I don't even remember the details of that conversation. I forgot it all immediately once I understood that Khiruev had decided to kill herself for me. It takes me a moment to recall what was said. Oh, yes.

"No, you were absolutely right. Honestly, I said a lot of the same things to Jedao myself, back during the Scattered Needles campaign." I remember those conversations clearly, and from two sides, which is an interesting perspective. 

Her smile returns a little, and then vanishes, because I've reminded her that I'm not the man she thought I was. I don't blame her if she feels grief, if she wants to mourn. I'm still mourning Jedao myself.

But when she speaks it's not about him. "I'm so sorry about your family."

She sways a little, like she wants to move towards me but holds herself back, though maybe that's just my wishful thinking. I want her to lean closer and put her arms around me. It's a sudden fierce longing, and it shocks and nauseates me a little, even though she's not my subordinate any more, even though I am no longer Kel, even though we are balancing on the edge of a new world together. Even though it's not even a sexual longing, just a wish for human contact, for someone to comfort me the way no one has since Jedao's occasional kindness, and he could never touch me in the flesh anyway, never pat my shoulder or slap me on the back the way he sometimes did with his soldiers when he was alive. 

I am very tired. I should rest. The servitors will keep me company, and they are kind to me. It has to be enough.

"I'll see you later," I say, and stand up, even though I don't want to, because I can't bear to sit there and not take her hands the way I want to.

"Take the watch," she says. "But bring it back to me tomorrow. I'm not done with it."

When I walk out of the medical bay, High General Brezan is standing outside, leaning against the wall, glaring at me. "Can you afford to be moping out here?" I ask him, consciously emphasizing my drawl. "I know you're new to command, but it usually involves active commanding. And you're new, and your troops are afraid and uncertain and angry. You should be talking to them."

Brezan takes some time to respond. I watch him bite down on his initial urge to tell me to fuck off. "Regulations call for commanding officers to be off duty for twelve hours out of every twenty four when not in a combat situation," he says, very flatly. "Which I know you know."

"And you're spending your off hours skulking outside medical."

He says nothing. And honestly, he doesn't have to. I don't trust me around Khiruev either. 

"Care for a duel later?" I ask him casually.

I see something spark in his eyes. Then he looks down, pulls a bit at the hems of his gloves. "I figured out why Jedao dueled so much," he says. "I'm not giving you more free information on me."

"He dueled because it was fun," I say. "And I have a feeling you might give me a bit of a challenge."

He looks up again. He can't avoid anyone's eyes for long, it's not in his nature. He'd much rather defiantly stare his opponent down, as he's doing to me now. And I can see that I've hooked him. 

He longs to beat me, or at least to give me a few whaps to prove to me that I can't steamroll everyone every time.

That might do me good.

After ten seconds he says, "Ten hours. The dueling halls. Don't be late. Do you even have a sword?"

I think about saying, I'll use General Khiruev's, but he would actually punch me then, so instead I say, "I assume you've got spare practice blades."

He nods, sharply.

"Now go sleep," he tells me. "You look terrible."

I didn't realize he cared.

But I look in the mirror when I finally get back to my quarters, and he's right. My face is pale and gaunt, and there are deep shadows under my eyes. And this dress does not flatter me. It's Khiruev's, and was purchased when we both weighed more. 

I wasn't lying when I said that being Jedao is useful. Parts of it are even fun. But other parts aren't, despite what I said to Shuos-zho. Sometimes I move, or see my reflection, or take off my uniform, and suddenly I'm very aware that this is Cheris's body, not Jedao's. I had four hundred years to get used to being attached to anchors, of course, but this is the first time I've seen through someone else's eyes, breathed through her lungs and felt her ribcage expand, washed her hair, cupped her hands and splashed water over her face and closed her eyes. Being a womanform is far, far better than being a revenant, and I definitely enjoy feeling physical sensation again. But I wish I could be as thoughtlessly comfortable within myself as I was when I was only Cheris. 

I could commiserate with Brezan, maybe, except I absolutely can't, of course. I don't think he hates me any more, but we're never going to be friends. Unfortunate, because he's- not a good Kel, but better, a good man. A brave and honorable man. I'd have liked to have him on my staff, four centuries ago. I'd have liked to have him in my company, two years ago.

I undress mechanically and lie down on my bed and turn my face to the wall, my hands still holding tight to Khiruev's watch. I can still feel its heartbeat against my skin. It's warm against the cold of the dark that is barely broken by my night light.

I've wanted to die ever since I was twelve. I remember clearly the day I first felt it. I was out feeding the geese, and it was a cold, gray day. There was a chilly wind blowing. I thought, I'm too tired to do this. It was like a void opened up before me. But my sister would have to feed the geese if I didn't, and she'd be annoyed at me, so I finished the job, and went inside and designed a new game.

The void was very passive during my adolescence, and most of the time I could forget about it, especially when I was with Ruo, who was always bursting with life, with energy and joy that was contagious. When I felt that emptiness at night I would sneak into his dorm room and creep into his bed, and he wouldn't ask any questions, just put his arms around me and kiss the top of my head.

Then I got him killed. For thirty years after that I thought about killing myself every day. It got stronger with every atrocity I committed. 

Kujen could have removed that desire from me if he'd wanted to. He didn't.

I still love Ruo. I still think about the smell of his hair, the feel of his hands. I whisper his name to myself in the darkness of these quarters on board the Hierarchy of Feasts. It's so strange to me to feel that way about a man, when I've never loved anyone but women before I ate those carrion shards.

But I can say his name to myself now and not want to die. Because I'm already dead. It feels peaceful. I'm lucky. I got what I wanted, and at the same time I'm still here to see the Hexarchate finally fall. 

Cheris was always a good Kel, a suicide hawk who wished fiercely to live and serve. 

Maybe that's why I've done more to further our goals in one year as her than I did in four hundred as me.

The death of my swarm, the murder of my people, my betrayal by the thing I had devoted my life to, those are all much better reasons to want to die than the honking of geese on a cold day. But 

I'm still going. So it was a problem with my original brain, like my dyscalculia, my various forms of madness. The raging ego carried over, unfortunately, but at least I'm a bit more self aware now.

Or maybe the flaw is actually in who I am now. Because I let my swarm die, I let my people die, and I pretended disaffection, I acted like I didn't care. Could a functioning human being really do that?

Much worse than my lingering feelings for Ruo are my feelings for Kujen. Those were inconvenient enough when he was my ally. They should have died once he became my enemy. He's evil, and I'm not, not any more, or that's what I keep telling myself. But I miss him. I lie here in the darkness of my quarters and I forget I'm not in the darkness of the Cradle, desperate for a whisper of his voice. Kujen... are you there? Do you miss me like I miss you?

I don't want to sleep alone. 

I want Khiruev to be here.

One of the beetleform servitors, who I still call Fifteen because despite our friendship none of them have told me their names, approaches my bedside, lights flashing softly in the dark. The General would come if you asked her to.

"That's why I can't," I whisper, and stuff one of my ungloved hands in my mouth, stifling my sobs.

The beetleform extends its legs high enough to climb onto the bed, and settles down next to me, silent except for a low hum of machinery. I reach out and grab my night light and clutch it to my chest, and then I close my eyes and finally feel myself relaxing.  
  


 

 

The practice sword is weighted exactly the same as any other, but I miss my own sword. Which I suppose has been removed from the Unspoken Law by now, and is probably part of the Shuos hexarch's collection of traitor memorabilia. This practice sword's blade is colorless. Brezan's is yellow and green. His grip on it is perfectly competent, as is his stance.

I haven't used a sword since my duel with Nerevor, and I'm curious to find out my own dueling style. Since I got myself into my current state, sometimes my past habits and abilities have blended rather harmoniously, like when I prevented Brezan's assassination attempt and used a classic Shuos move while managing to incorporate Cheris's training in hand to hand combat, which was tailored specifically to someone shorter and heavier than Jedao had been in his original body. But that was when my life was in danger and I had to move without thinking. 

The hall has filled with spectators. I glance over them. The servitors tell me that about half of the soldiers on this ship are free of formation instinct now. I've arranged things to work out rather well for me; the soldiers who disagree with Brezan and I politically are also the ones unwilling to give up formation instinct, and so they'll have to follow Brezan anyway. It's nauseatingly neat, and I would be ashamed of myself if I had any shame left. 

However, the ones who have chosen freedom still need to be watched. They'll stick with us because they have nowhere else to go, and their training will probably prevent many outright coup attempts, but we need them to want to follow Brezan. Which means I can't afford to publicly humiliate him right now. But if I'm too obvious about holding back, he'll get angry with me. I'm going to need to be careful.

Khiruev isn't here. I'm glad, because she still needs to rest, but I'm also disappointed.

Brezan salutes me with his sword, and I return the salute. It's not proper, strictly speaking, because I am no longer Kel. But no one will complain.

"Quite an audience," I comment, with a slight tilt of my head towards the spectators. 

"I'm sure they're all eager to see me get knocked on my ass," Brezan replies.

"Well," I say, "we wouldn't want to disappoint them," and immediately raise my sword to parry his sudden thrust. Trying to take me off guard? I'm disappointed. He has to know he's not going to win this through speed. 

We both take a step back. I watch him. The everpresent anger and tension has transmuted into a fierce concentration. He really does look like a hawk. 

Unfortunately for him, Jedao’s reflexes are still with me, and when he attacks again I step around him as easily as I shot the gun out of his hand when we first met: action before even conscious thought, just reacting to the same motions from thousands of duels before this one.

Enough reacting. I push back. He parries, almost too slow and with more force than is necessary. He’s pretty good, though. Not as good as Nerevor was, and definitely not as good as Jedao, but if I was just Cheris it’d be over already. His style isn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know. 

I tap him on the chest with the tip of my sword. He flinches and hisses at the sting of the practice setting. 

“Best two out of three?” I offer. 

The next time he doesn’t move until I do. I move forward and he moves back. Trying to get me to overextend; trying to make use of his height advantage. It’s his best chance. I weigh about the same as I did when I was a living Shuos, but I’m shorter now than I’ve ever been before and sometimes I forget I don’t have good reach. He didn’t use this strategy before now because it feels unfair to him, I’d guess. 

I try out a thrust; he parries; I retreat. 

His soldiers are watching. They were my soldiers, a week ago. 

I lunge forward and pretend to lose my balance. He hurries to take advantage and I disarm him, and poke him in the shoulder. 

As the third round begins I can see he’s losing his temper, which is going to make this even easier. At this point I’d usually grin, but I’m not really enjoying this. I wanted to work out our tension, not ramp it up further. The servitor monitoring the match makes the noise that signals start, and then it turns slightly, and makes a more inquiring noise. 

I look in the direction it’s facing, over Brezan’s shoulder, at the line of silent, watching Kel, and at the door that’s sliding open and the figure coming through it. In the deep shadows of the dueling hall, the pale whorls of Khiruev’s scars seem to float on her face, and the white streak in her hair glows as the rest of her becomes a uniform dark shape. She moves under a light, and the shape becomes a human, eyes bright, mouth turned up at the corners. 

Brezan’s blade slaps me hard across the shoulder with a harsh buzz and a bright explosion of pain. I stagger, nearly falling, brain momentarily empty, reset by the stinging in my arm and back that, thankfully, quickly fades into soreness. 

There’s a collective intake of breath from the watching Kel, and then a frozen silence. I blink the shock from my vision, push myself upright. Brezan is watching me, mouth twitching, like he wants to grin and is angry at himself for it. I let out a breathless laugh. “You got me,” I wheeze, and his face finally cracks into a smile with teeth in it. Now that the tension’s broken, I hear a few relieved laughs from the audience too. 

Brezan thumbs the button on the hilt of his sword and the blade flickers into nothing. “You still won,” he comments ruefully.

I grin wider. “I’m not the one who just got humiliated by their commanding officer, sir,” I point out. If he was Gized I’d clap him on the shoulder, but this is Brezan- he’d probably take a swing at me. Instead I just look at him, catch his gaze until we’re both smiling at each other, him a little rueful and hesitant but clearly happy with his victory. I bow deeply to him, and he bows back. At that point his soldiers start coming up to congratulate him, so I can turn and look for Khiruev.

She’s still there where I saw her, still smiling. I can take in the details now- she’s dressed not in a uniform but in a soft gray shirt and trousers the medical bay probably manufactured for her. There’s a servitor with her- the birdform. It flashes encouragingly at me. 

“Are you cleared to be up and about?” I ask. She looks steady, standing upright with her hands laced behind her back. Still looks like a feather could knock her over, but that’s just because she’s so thin, not because she’s swaying or drifting. 

“Don’t ask me to do any push-ups,” she says. “But I felt up to going for a small stroll.”

“And how do you feel now?” I ask.  

“Honestly? Like I’d like to go to my quarters.”

“I’ll walk with you,” I say, too quickly. I glance at Brezan, still in a knot of conversation. He sees my glance, but his face is impassive.

“I’d like that,” Khiruev says. I can’t look away from her smile.

We walk slowly. Khiruev’s legs only tremble a little, but by the time we get to the door down the hall from mine the muscles of her face are taut. I feel bad for her; I know intimately the frustration of being captive to a weakened body, especially for a soldier. But I also know this is far from her first convalescence. I know the details of how she got those scars. So many times we both should have died, but didn’t. 

She sits down on the bed, instead of one of the chairs. “Brezan should take the ranking officer’s quarters,” she muses. “More shuffling.”

She can call him ‘Brezan’ now, and not ‘the high general’- I choose to take that as a good sign. 

I sit next to her on the bed, and it feels like one of the most dangerous gambits I’ve ever made. I can feel my heart thudding in my chest. 

Slowly, and feather-lightly, she puts her hand on my knee, on the white fabric of the training jumpsuit I put on for the duel. I’m suddenly aware that neither of us is wearing a uniform.

In all my wealth of memories there’s nothing I have to compare to this. In the Academy- Academies- I knew the awful fear of rejection, the pain of caring too much about something that could go wrong- there was Ruo, and Orua, and a few others- but by the time I graduated, I knew that there were much worse things to be afraid of, there were pains so vast that there was none left over for something as small as a crush. 

The worst that could happen with Ruo or Orua was a falling-out- or so I thought. 

Khiruev is mortal. Two days ago she was dying. Falling in and out of consciousness on a medical bed. Dying because of me, and there was nothing I could do to stop it, even with the power to rewrite an empire. There were good reasons for the taboo, even before formation instinct. 

I put my hand on top of hers. Solid warmth. I think about lying in the dark, alone.

“I’m too old for this,” Khiruev says, breaking the silence, voice quiet and scratchy, “but-” Her body turns, shifts, towards mine. “I’m old for a Kel and in all those years there’s been  _ nothing- _ ” Her eyes meet mine, and in their blackness I can see the void in my own heart, the emptiness.

I want to touch her face, the way I almost did that night in the rooms up the hall. But if I do that it will be all over, our self-restraint snapped like a cheap thread. 

“In a way, this was easier when you were my commanding officer,” she admits, breathing out. “Much easier to be drawn to a cause than to a person.”

“We made a good team, I think.”

She nods. “We did.”

“Please never die,” I say. I don’t mean to. It just happens.

She puts her hands on the sides of my face and kisses me. 

Something shifts. All the people I were, they don’t matter, at least in the sense that they’re not inhabiting this body with me any longer. I am not the man who kissed Ruo and I am not the woman who kissed Orua. I am not the boy who got in fistfights over his mother’s honor or the girl who talked with servitors on the beach. 

I am Hellspin, and I am the Fortress of Scattered Needles, but I am not the person who chose hubris over a million lives, and I’m not the one who chose faith in a corrupt empire over eighty-two  thousand. 

I am the person who wrote the new calendar in what I desperately hope was the least possible quantity of blood, and I am the person this person wants next to her in the neverending war against the abyss.

The rush of relief brings tears to my eyes. I kiss her back, eyes closed, hands still, mind quiet.


End file.
